The WiBee project is looking for cranberry surveys! Last year cranberries were our best represented crop with 78 surveys but we only have 12 this year and bloom is past 50%. The preliminary 2020 results were encouraging, but we could really use another good year to get enough data to overcome the natural variability of bees. We are again able to offer the $50 honorarium for people who do 9 or more of the 5-minute surveys (3/day at one location on 3 days). Wibee is a free easy to use smartphone app that allows people to collect high quality data on wild bee pollination in their crop, wildflowers, natural area, or garden.

It’s a statewide project where we are trying to collect enough data to help growers know what factors in Wisconsin increase pollination by wild bee pollination on a farm or individual property, but to do that we need contributions from all over the state. The app trains people on 6 basic pollinator groups and then to contribute, you just spend 5 minutes at a time watching flowers and tapping buttons on the phone to count bee visits. People can find out more on the website: https://pollinators.wisc.edu/wibee/, or by emailing me at pollinators@wisc.edu. 

This article was posted in Insects and tagged bees, pollinators, WiBee.